Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This article argues for a non-normative and pluralistic approach to the study of utopia among Muslim people. The authors employ the contributions to this special section as a starting point to redress a number of ethnocentric biases clouding the relationship between utopia and Islam. They criticize arguments that deny Muslims the ability to produce ‘genuine’ utopias, highlighting commonalities between a religious culture and the secular culture in the West that has endorsed the notion of utopia. At the same time, the contributors show how in scholarly research a normative and prejudicial concept of ‘Islamic utopia’ has obscured the variety of forms that utopianism assumes among Muslim people, particularly the youth. This article envisages an inductive approach that takes into account both the different positionalities from which the concepts of Islam and utopia are appropriated and the diverse political outcomes that are produced.